Journey to Personal Freedom and Happiness

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What a life!

It has been a long time since I graduated from my Master Degree study. Long story short, the degree and my experience of working in Toyota Europe Headquarter in Belgium could get me through into joining Toyota in Indonesia.

Life takes you to unexpected places, but love brings you home

Not As What I’ve Expected

Being a part of Toyota is really a dream come true. However, as they says, Becareful of what you wish for, because you don’t know what happened if your wish really come true.

It turns out, even though I joined Sales Training Div. , Most of the time all my job revolves around car, engines and the knowledge of machines. Well, I am certainly not a car guy and has no intention whatsoever dealing with mechanics.

I adore Toyota because of its kaizen soul that lives and breed in the culture and I love to be a part of the time that will nurture it through people development, lean process and soon. In other words, I am process and people guy. And so I bailed out and venture in my own journey!

A Jungle It Is

Never in my life I imagine that I would be an entrepreneur. Especially since my MBTI- myers briggs personality of mine is INFJ. A hell big no no if you know what I mean.

If your design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

And so I seek out courses and books and knowledge to help me do just that. An INFJ entrepreneur is totally do-able.

For those of you who are introverted and in the same position as I was and wondering whether should just go for it. I say go for it and use these resource below to help you smoothen your way through the nitty gritty of becoming introverted enterpreneur.

Those are my top 4 most influential books that help me deal with the irony of the dominant extroverted world of the enterpreneurship.

The key is, as Gary Vaynerchuk points out,

Playing in a way that feels right to you, before it feels right to anybody else around you.

A Shed of Light

I now start my own micro/small business together with my wife. We do importing jewelry and marketing it through offline stores and online ( lazada, shopee, instagram). At other times, I will share the story of how I started those.

As an INTROPRENEUR (introvert entrepreneur), I enjoy my life more now, since I can quite apply kaizen and lean management practices in my small business. (not in a grand scale of course)

As a business owner though, I now focused my learning on Lean marketing and digital marketing.

From the late night study before exam, intensive internship in Belgium, until the tight schedule of thesis work.. It’s all finally comes down to the fun festivities I had the last few weeks.

Since Last Month Wednesday, April 4 2013, I can officially say that I am now Dipl.-Ing (FH) Yosef Adji Baskoro M.Eng !!

I would like to share a huge milestone in my life with you. Just look at my face at the photo taken just after my thesis presentation outside the room. (two thumbs up with a HUGE smile on my face!)

My master degree is Technical Management with focus in Industrial Management. In plain words, it is similar to MBA degree with focus on production management and I am so thrilled to be able to apply the knowledge I gained in internship. I hope in the future I can combine my love for production management, teaching and human side of productivity.

A few highlights of my graduation…..

Yes, that is me, PROUDLY holding my certificate

My amazing parents flew in from Indonesia to Germany for my graduation and we made a little round family trip around Europe!

Graduation Dinner with my ONLY Indonesian friends in Germany in the same city where I studied..They are really amazing friends!!

Some of my international friends!

We did it!! PROST!!

Thank God for the achievement and I hope I will have a less bumpy route ahead…cross my finger and trust in God!

You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world ~Tom Brokaw

Similar like in a body building world as it is in our daily life. Be the best means doing the task with full immersion, focus and wholehearted. Sometimes, winning takes a lot more than that. In a situation where a lot of competitions and desire to be the best owned already by many, a lot of time this challenge will brings men to the search of additional boost to reach a level that would not be possible if the same men wish to attain the same level in which he desires in a short amount of time with fairly less effort.

In bodybuilding world, this additional boost came from supplements and there are magnificently vast amount of choices about it. All supplements, created for the benefit of the general user. However, everyone is not the same biologically and therefore smart decision is needed. Choosing the right supplement could mean a good well shape body or in the other side of the coin partly disable body.

In our daily life, higher productivity is attainable by an additional boost to our brain power through the use of “supplement”. A trivial decision is about answering questions such as what are supplement for brain power and which one is actually fit to our personality, biological nature of our body, etc, etc. So that in the end we are sure that our decision will actually prove us to achieve more and become more productive.

All of those articles and many more are trying to study and find out which one has better health effect or decreasing stress or any other effect which at the end will have an impact on enhancing general productivity. However, following all the advice blindly is fool and so neglecting all the advice.

Smart decision is needed so that we don’t be like fools that either follow all advices that are coming or reject all advices. It is better to be stupid as stupid people learn, getting better and at the end thrive and become wiser and smarter but fools are unwise and can’t be made wise.

Can of Brain Toniq (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A word to the wise ain’t necessary. It is the stupid ones that needed advice. ~ Bill Cosby

That is the reason that we should pick the right supplements that really fits our needs. Personally, I drink all of them but with different function with I unconsciously has strategically decide which drink I will drink when and how much. However, my personal favorite that I always drink everyday is tea.

The rapid change of the world makes innovation a lethal weapon to become a big part of solution to bring about countries, companies, or communities to a useful change that hopefully take them to the top the leading pack in the world. Little research on the topic could give many hints that innovation is the key. There are now disruptive innovation, cultural innovation, reverse innovation and other terms that use innovations as the key.

However, the overwhelming topic of innovation that filled the market has overshadowed some important not so radical, slow and not extreme change that comes from continuous improvement that actually be the backbone of many leading companies in the world. The power of kaizen culture which embedded in top leader of the pack has been uncover in the book The high-velocity edge by Steven Spear seems to be undermined by the amount of innovation books and its varieties on the market.

I am not against innovation because I understand that without innovation no companies could ever bare their existence let alone leading. innovation is the key. I really enjoy reading books on innovation especially books by Clayton M. Christensen which really is the result of his in-depth research and reflection about the world of innovation.

My argument about innovation is that most of the books on innovations discussed about big changes that will lead to strategic/big step. My take on current innovation paradigm is that innovation is not enough because we still need kaizen. Some people say that kaizen is innovation also, but it really is not. The rule of thumbs is what your mind perceived what innovation is, reduce it by factor of at least 100.

When for example Clayton M. Christensen tried to detail innovation into a more elaborate by dividing it further into Disruptive and Sustaining Innovation. People get confuse because first, where is then Kaizen? Second, a strange combination of words is used (Sustaining Innovation!).

The Innovator’s Dilemma (Christensen 1997) identified two distinct categories—sustaining and disruptive—based on the circumstances of innovation.

Sustaining Innovation : when the race entails making better products that can be sold for more money to attractive customers—we found that incumbents almost always prevail.

Disruptive Innovation :when the challenge is to commercialize a simpler, more convenient product that sells for less money and appeals to a new or unattractive customer set—the entrants are likely to beat the incumbents. This is the phenomenon that so frequently defeats successful companies. It implies, of course, that the best way for upstarts to attack established competitors is to disrupt them. (Low end disruption and New market disruption)

Confusion happen among the practitioner of whether Sustaining Innovation is Kaizen because it is also about making better products to attractive customers. Additionally,two words of sustaining and innovation are both contradictory in nature in a way that when innovation happen, change happen and it moves the object of innovation to some future state.Thus actually it is inappropriate to give the name “sustain”. Sustain means almost equally to maintain. Hence it means the innovation going nowhere but only maintain and hence going nowhere.

History wise, the Kaizen term exist already since 1986 which is kaizen/continuous improvement which small incremental improvement. However, it seems that the founder of kaizen concept had predicted that confusion between Innovation and Kaizen will likely to happen.

This big misconception has been cleared before by Masaaki Imai in 1986, a notable quality philosopher and practitioner and the founder of Japanese consulting company namely Kaizen Institute or best known by the west as the father of Continuous Improvement. Misconception of innovation happen when people associate immediately innovation with improvement. The truth is that innovation indeed is improvement but improvement is not just innovation. Improvement consist of Kaizen and Innovation in which until the next innovation, kaizen will improve the system little by little.

From the graph it is clear that Kaizen perfected Innovation. It means that any types of Innovation whether it is disruptive innovation, cultural innovation, reverse innovation will be make perfect by following through with Kaizen afterwards. Kaizen will target improvement until next innovation.

Hence it is very clear that innovation itself is insufficient to create a winning edge and that innovation coupled with relentless kaizen become the ultimate answer. This is why in my opinion, despite of the effort to rally with other companies toward Innovation from generating, managing, until applying innovation many firms still happen to be in the lower league. Because Innovation without Kaizen is just like “Pound Saving, Penny Foolish”.It seems good that you get to save many Pounds, but other companies take care also every Pennies possible with Kaizen and overtime they who cares for both thrives.